Among her many complaints is that YA books give readers a “satisfying” ending — as if that is a bad thing! Happy, sad or somewhere in-between I think the failure to deliver a satisfying ending to “stick the landing” if you will is a near crime on the part of an author in whatever genre they work. People have paid their hard earned money for my books. The least I can do is not have them going Whaaaaaat? at the end.

As many of you know I have generated a lot of words about “happy endings” and how they have a place in literature too, and I reject the idea that only a completely horrible, downer ending can be considered “serious”. That doesn’t mean there will be loss and even death in the course of a story, but I think the kernel of joy and hope should exist even in the face of the death of a beloved character.

You are way too easy on the elitists!
Modern art and literature are part of a conspiracy to strip the folk of their heritage so they may be exploited more completely – nothing more, nothing less.
Sounds crazy?
Check it out here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
I’ve read Frances Stoner’s book.
It’s a minor masterpiece of detective work.
She has names, places, amounts of money, and interviews with the utterly unrepentent secret policemen who brought it off.
“After all,” as one put it, “we didn’t have a ministry of culture, so we had to use the C.I.A.”

The McCarthy purges, the attempted destruction of the comic book industry, and the huge expansion of corporate and government granting to arts and letters since the Allied victory in 1,945 amounts to an attempted conquest of the public mind by the ruling class.
This conquest is no different than any other undertaken by imperial states except that it is not physical.
It has fortresses, warriors, prisoners, no-man’s lands, scorched earth policies, victories (movies, publishing) and defeats (comic books, radio) and continuing battles (children’s books, genre fiction, the Internet).
It does not yet have concentration camps.

Note that there has been NO PERIOD in which arts and letters were free to develope without elite direction or sanction.
The period of traditional control by religiously based censors and aristocratic patronage gave way to government/corporate funding after WWI in Europe and after WWII in English America with no interregnum.

I think that’s a bridge too far for me, Raymond. I think the creators and teachers of “literature” wants to feel important and relevant so they have to look down on “popular” entertainment whether it’s romance or mystery or science fiction, or summer movies for that matter. Publishers just want to sell books — a laudable goal in my opinion. I want them to make money so they will keep buying and publishing my books. At least we have popular culture now. Writers, artists and musicians aren’t dependent on having a “patron” in order to create their art.